


pack light, love heavy

by burnsidesjulia



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Episode: e060-066 The Stolen Century Parts 1-7, Flowers, Gen, Language of Flowers, Magic, Memory Alteration, but not dnd magic, the death is only temporary of course
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-24 14:48:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14956670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burnsidesjulia/pseuds/burnsidesjulia
Summary: As long as Lucretia can remember, the flowers have followed her around.or, the one where Lucretia grows flowers.





	pack light, love heavy

**Author's Note:**

> for any of this to make sense, you've gotta read the notes at the end. i went very flower-language heavy. also, this was a sort of new writing style for me. be gentle

Lucretia is ten years old, and she twists her ankle falling down.

She had been playing tag with the older kids. The kids her age never really wanted her around, but the older ones did sometimes. They said she was better than all the "diaper babies." She wondered if any of _them_ really were.

The older kids play tag in the forest, down near the place where empty mine shafts and pitfalls dot the ground like common rabbit holes. Lucretia tells them they’re not supposed to go there, and they laugh at her. “You’re a goody-two-shoes,” they tell her, and she is incapable of seeing how being good and having both shoes might be a bad thing. But she follows them to the mines and twists her ankle tumbling down a hill. She cannot walk, and she yells for the older kids. She hears them rushing by across the fallen leaves, stirring winds with their bodies, but ignoring her cries.

A wild bloom of marigolds spread around her as she weeps. 

-

Lucretia’s first kiss is clumsy, her braces sticking to her lips, her hands in her pockets. The two of them try again and again to get it right.

“That one didn’t count,” Lucretia says. “We have to try again. It has to be perfect."

“My lips are chapped,” the other girl laughs. “It won’t ever be perfect.”

Pink carnations roll into the room around them, carried on waves of lighter pink roses and massive daffodils. When they pull back again, the girl looks around the room.

“Lucretia,” she whispers, definitely in awe. She repeats Lucretia’s name several times as the flower keep pouring in, now accompanied by ivy sprigs coated in white flowers. The girl laughs and interrupts herself to say they look like sugar dust atop a cake. The room smells like a funeral home, and the girl whispers that, too. Lucretia feels the knot in her stomach kindly begin to untangle.

“Lucretia,” she says after some time, and now it is said with finality. The girl turns back to her. “Did you do this?”

Lucretia swallows hard. “Uh. Yeah. Yeah, I think so.” Her voice is small.

The girl kisses her again with a new intensity, some spark born anew. When she pulls back, a massive, thornless rose has blossomed over her heart. She plucks it and tucks it behind Lucretia’s ear. The stem scratches her faintly through her short cropped hair, but Lucretia is smiling now.

“Cool,” is all she says.

-

“It’s just something that happens,” Lucretia says. She is twenty-one, in her last year of university. A roommate has asked how she does what she does.

Lucretia isn’t a follower of Pan. She is not a druid, nor a dryad. But as she speaks, purple crocus snake out of her loose t-shirt. Her roommate watches, fascinated.

“Can you feel it?” he asks, sounding awestruck. Lucretia shrugs. “The flower, yes. The growing, no. And I can’t control it, either.”

“Ah,” he says, significantly less interested. A yellow carnation joins the flower on her breast.

-

“I’ve never seen that before,” Merle huffs, far too near her face. He pulls away and removes the still sprouting pear blossom wreath from his head. “It’s not Pan. It’s not religious at all, actually. So I don’t know.”

“Alright,” Lucretia says in response. She’s used to that answer.

“Was your mother a dryad, maybe?” Magnus offers, and Lucretia shakes her head. “No, I’m sure of it.” She shrugs. “Some people are just born different.”

“Like how Barold can wiggle his ears,” Lup chimes in, just as Barry echoes, “I told you not to call me that,” in the near distance. Lucretia laughs, the sound as loud and clear as a bell, and a red, yellow-speckled rose joins those already surrounding her.

“She makes plants appear,” Taako scoffs incredulously for the second time in the past ten minutes. “Jeezy creezy. Watch your back, Luce. Merle’s gonna have a fucking field day with this.”

-

Magnus dies in their first year.

All of them are back on the ship except Magnus. Some of them are starting to panic, and Lucretia is one of them. Poison oak crawls across the deck of the ship, catching on the edges of her robes. Intermingled with it is peony, the color stark and shocking against all that dull green. Lucretia can’t stop shaking her head. “We have to help him,” she says. “I can’t let my friends suffer like this.”

“It’s just one friend, Lucretia,” comes Davenport’s stern voice from his captain’s chair. He's shaking his head. “Someone has to survive.”

“And what if we don’t?” She’s arguing now. “What if we all die? Is it fair to let him die alone?”

Silence falls. Lucretia’s breathing is labored.

“We’re leaving,” Davenport says finally. The bond engine whirs to life. Lucretia rushes to the window and stares down. And gods, she can see Magnus still down there, collapsed to his knees in a clearing surrounded by crying animals.

She feels something ripped from her heart as she wishes, prays, says, _gods I need to protect him-_

A wall of stinging nettle springs from the ground, taller than the pillars of the Hunger. Davenport has to swerve to avoid it. But Lucretia sees, just for a moment, as the Hunger fumbles with it. She’s slowed it down. She’s stopped it-

The moment passes. The Hunger crashes like a wave, and Magnus is gone.

Lucretia hits her knees. She’s sobbing now, can’t control it. She can't control _anything_. Her and Magnus had gotten so close. Magnus was so special.

It’s his fault, Barry is trying to coax her. “He was being foolhardy. The rest of us are still alive-”

“I tried, I can’t,” Lucretia replies. “I can’t. He’s dead, Barry.”

“And look at us. We’re… we’re fine.” They’re sailing out into the stars, and the sky is wriggling like a worm upon a hook, not violently, but almost resigned to its fate. Lucretia curls to the ground and finds herself doing the same.

There is a flash of light, and she is back where she started- standing by the captain’s chair. Barry is standing by Merle. And Merle is standing by Magnus. 

Lucretia rushes him and gives him a hug, something she’s never given anyone on this crew. White clover sprouts from Magnus’ collar as she says, “I tried to save you.”

Magnus returns the hug, scooping her up and into the air. The rest of the crew just stares as Magnus sets her back down, laughs and says, “You did a good job, Lucretia.”

-

One lonely year spent fixing the ship, Lucretia works to hone her powers. She figures out that it’s strong emotion and love that makes her flowers bloom.

For twelve empty months, she surrounds herself with rosemary and dandelions and promises not to forget.

-

Lucretia uses her flowers for good.

She makes Barry and Lup a bouquet of honeysuckle and hollyhock, makes Magnus crowns of oakleaf, gives Taako red daisies to braid into his hair. And through it all, she writes. On each page, she presses a flower that represents the feeling. Here, a sprig of witch-hazel. There, the petal of a sweet pea.

But her skill cannot control it all. When she feels too deeply, the flowers still escape her.

When Lucretia sinks her journals in Fisher’s tank, they are covered in a garden. Wormwood and rue and rainflower, she watches Fisher tear out page after page. She’s never seen anything more beautiful, but… but balsamine sprouts at her feet, intertwined with amaryllis blossoms, just beginning to open. She knows flower language at this point. She should not be surprised.

When she leaves Merle at the beach, she leaves with him an azalea, several tucked into his beard. She smiles proudly. He looks fit to stay here. When she places Magnus on the outskirts of Raven’s Roost, she ruffles his hair and grows a sprig of thuja, bent around his finger like a ring. With Taako, in the middle of nowhere, she knows he will hurt the most. She leaves him Asphodelus.

When Davenport finally wakes up after days of waiting and longing, he can no longer speak in the eloquent tongue he used to. Lucretia sits beside him and weeps as he strokes her hair and coos his own name to her. Stinging nettles pierce her skin.

She sews into his jacket a forget me not.

**Author's Note:**

> listed in order of usage!
> 
> Marigold-pain, grief  
> Crocus- youthful joy  
> Yellow carnation- disappointment  
> Pink carnations- the love of a woman  
> Pink roses- youth  
> Daffodils- uncertainty, new beginnings  
> Ivy sprigs- desperate to please  
> Thornless rose- love at first sight  
> Pear blossom- lasting friendship  
> Yellow-red rose- joy, excitement  
> Poison oak- no real meaning, but for the sake of my story, fear and anger  
> Peony- shame, anger  
> Stinging nettle- protection  
> White clover- i promise  
> rosemary- remembrance  
> Dandelions - overcoming hardship  
> Honeysuckle- Devoted affection, bonds of love  
> Hollyhock- ambition  
> Oakleaf- strength  
> Red daisies- beauty unknown to possessor  
> Witch hazel- magic  
> Sweet pea- gratitude  
> Wormwood- absence, bitter sorrow  
> Rue- regret, sorrow, repentance  
> Rainflower- I love you back, I must atone for my sins, I will never forget you  
> Balsamine- impatience  
> Amaryllis- pride  
> Azalea- take care, gratitude  
> Thuja- everlasting friendship  
> Asphodel- my regrets follow you to the grave  
> Forget me not- true love, don’t forget me.
> 
> i wrote this to rid myself of writers block. it was actually.... really fun.
> 
> thank you for comments, kudos, any of the like. i need it and appreciate it so much.
> 
> im on tumblr @dungeondyke, or @twelvesided for my d&d blog. stay tuned for that magnus character study i keep talking about- it's coming, slowly.


End file.
